Frank Dobson has "reluctantly" rounded on his successor Alan Milburn's plans to reward high performing NHS hospitals.

The health secretary's respected predecessor - who left the job to mount a Downing Street orchestrated and ill fated London mayoral challenge - "reluctantly" turned on the government as Milburn was defending plans to allow successful NHS managers to create autonomous "foundation hospitals" with ailing hospitals taken over by charities or the private sector.

"I am reluctant to say what I am going to say," he said. "But in my mind the fact that some NHS hospitals are outstandingly successful does demonstrate NHS hospitals are quite capable of doing a first rate job without their management being 'franchised' to the private sector."

Dobson told the Commons that private health sector managers were unlikely to have the experience appropriate to running an NHS hospital, as private hospitals were often small, low-tech and had few emergency admissions.

And the former cabinet minister asked: "Would you guarantee that none of these outside managers come from such private sector disasters such as Railtrack, Equitable Life [and] Marconi?"

Replying the health secretary agreed that there were "very many, many outstanding managers" in the health service but argued for the sharing of management expertise.

"What patients everywhere deserve, and not just in some places, is the best quality management and the best quality services. And I just do not believe that good quality managers begin and end in the public sector," he said.